According to a report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, nearly 18,000 people died from terrorist attacks in 2013, more than 6,000 of them were from Iraq alone. It is clear that the number of fatalities is increasing, thanks to the spread of ISIS, as this rate holds a 60% increase over the deaths of the year before. However, “terrorism” still does not pose enough of a threat to warrant the fear that many hold, and to justify the amount of effort and money that gets poured into this never-ending vendetta. It has been over a decade now, billions of dollars spent, and thousands of lives lost, yet we are still told that we should fear terror more now than ever before. Not only does the approach to “terror” not seem to be working, but taking into account statistical evidence, it isn't even justified.

It is true that people lose their lives in terrorist attacks, but the reality of the threat comes nowhere close to warranting the amount of energy and resources that has already been allocated to this ghost-chase. For the number of individuals worldwide who have been killed by a terrorist attack, the majority of victims in those cases come from foreign countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, and Nigeria. The second round of likely locations where you would be targeted for attacks would be in India, Somalia, Yemen, Thailand, or the Philippines. Furthermore, when it comes to the likelihood of Western civilians being targeted in an attack, the chances of likelihood plummet.